Reliability and Validity in Personality Testing Essay

Personality is a complex area of Psychology, which has been studied for many years, by many experts in the field. Each having their own ideas about how to understand, study and evaluate it. Here I will introduce personality briefly, looking at the theories behind it. Then explain the need for testing. As there are many test that are available to use, for the purpose of this essay I will look at The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) and discuss the reliability and validity of some studies around these tests.

Dispositional personality theories are quite different from biological personality theories. The two will be compared and dissected in this article. The Big Five Personality Test will also be analyzed and how it is used to study personality will be examined.

The Myers and Briggs Analysis is a series of questions that when answered are examined and grouped together in order to determine the personalities of those taking this test. This particular test can result in sixteen different outcomes or types of personalities, which is determined by four different categories that judge if you are introverted or extroverted, use your senses or your intuition, your choice to think or use your feelings, and finally if you are judgmental or perceptive. These series of questions are designed to judge our personalities and help us to determine which career pathways we will be most suited for based on our personality traits and abilities to work well with others, which is important

When discussing the accuracy of personality tests, there is no test, which will provide perfect precision. According to Dr. O'Neil, “an individual's personality is the complex of mental characteristics that makes them unique from other people” (2006, Para 1). O’Neil believes that the potential factors involved in shaping personality include values, beliefs, and expectations that are genetic and environmental (O’Neil, 2006).

One of the most important findings, which has found acceptance in recent psychological research, is that testing cognitive ability is valid for a variety of different jobs. Personality tests and skills provide valuable information for certain well-defined positions, such as seller, buyer and worker in routine production. The interviews to study the person, carried out by expert psychologists are also useful when simpler

This test is used eliminates candidates potential to use mental processes to solve work-related problems. Validity test is a general cognitive test that is good predictors if the candidate is able to perform the job; however, more complex jobs the better test results the tester will have. This test has demonstrated to produce many valid outcomes such as performance and successful training as well as predict job performance for complex jobs. One of the disadvantages to this type of test is that it is time consuming to develop if not purchased off of the

Bornstein, R. F. (2007). Toward a process-based framework for classifying personality tests [Peer comments on the journal article “Advancing personality assessment terminology: time to retire ”objective“ and ”projective“ as personality test descriptors” by G. J. Meyer, & J. E. Kurtz. Journal of personality assessment, 2 (89), 202-207.

This experiment focuses on the average personality traits of Texas A&M students, which we evaluate using descriptive statistics. We can use descriptive statistics to subscribe, show, or summarize data from a population in meaningful ways. By calculating multiple factors taken from the population, we can find the central tendency and variability. These two values gives us the most important information. The central tendency gives us the most typical or most representative score. These central tendency values are mean, median, and mode. Variability gives us the extent to which the scores in a group differ from each other. These include the range, average deviation, variance, and standard deviation. In this report, by examining the

Psychometrics came as a consequence from the theories in psychology which tried to find out if there was a way to measure a person’s intelligence.The first types of the psychometric tests were developed by Sir Francis Galton in the late 1800’s, and were later modified by psychometricians James McKeen Cattell and Charles Spearman. Today, psychometric tests are usually used by employers in recruitment and selection process in order to measure the abilities of a potential employee in specific skills such as: intelligence, critical reasoning, motivation and personality profile. Psychometric tests play an important role in selection practice: 70 percent of firms use them (Sackleton and Newell, 1991). The fundamental assumption of psychometrics is that people differ from each other, for instance in terms of their friendliness, their ability to use mathematics, or their motivation to gain success could be different and these differences can be measured. A definition offered for a psychometric test is “an objective and standardized measure of a sample of behaviour” (Anastasi, 1990)

a. According self tests using the Five Factor Model, my personality has low extraversion and emotional stability, a high degree of openness, and moderate levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness. Low extraversion is demonstrated in both professional and social envionments. While working a corporate job as a financial analyst, taking the time and initiative to interact with coworkers beyond the scope of the job was limited to a brief conversation once a day with the same two people. In large social gatherings, interactions are limited to familiar people with whom I have pre-existing friendships. If I attend a concert by myself, I will bring a book to read in between musical acts to prevent people from speaking to me. Low emotional

Selecting tests can measure knowledge, skills and ability, as well as other characteristics, such as personality traits and they are useful to evaluate the right employee for a specific role, by identifying the candidate personality. For example, if a company or department needs to hire a new manager, a psychological/aptitude test may help to understand better if the candidate has the features required for that specific job position (strong leadership skills, such as high self-confidence, calmness, flexibility, etc).

For psychologists, one of the more popular theories espoused is the trait approach to personality, or “the idea that people have consistent personality characteristics that can be measured and studied” (Kalat, 2002, 512). However there are several problems that arise. First, there are significant cross-cultural differences, so one set of personality traits for one culture may differ considerably for another. The next problem would concern the creation of a test that could accurately measure these traits. While psychologists have for the most part addressed these issues, I will focus on the latter of the two. There has been a

Companies have started to use personality tests in the past five years so that they can find a potential employee’s strengths and weaknesses. If questions and answers are quite accurate and test is done properly it can help an employer to find more about person’s advantages and disadvantages. It is very important to know because one of the most important points is that most of personality tests help to recognize unqualified candidates. “Although experts warn that many personality assessments don't deliver what they promise, legitimate scientifically validated tests are helping employers evaluate job candidates to select those best suited for particular positions. Other tests are designed to measure intelligence, honesty, management aptitude and other qualities.”

The historical use of the terms objective and projective to classify a personality test, and the problems with such classification.

Psychological tests and or psychological assessments are an important asset in the field of psychology. These tests are designed to measure people’s characteristics which pertain to behavior. There are a variety of different types of tests that can be used to assess different types of behaviors. According to the specific behavior or behaviors being assessed, tests are categorized into two types, ability tests and personality tests. Ability tests, which encompass achievement, aptitude, and intelligence testing are used to determine capacity or potential by measuring scores based on speed, accuracy, or both. On the other hand, personality tests, which include structured or projective are used to determine behavior traits, that may be overt